Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
Mexican State Asks For Ban On Call Of Juárez Video Game
February 21, 2011 By Staff
An image from the videogame "Call of Juarez."
Today in Latin America
Top Story — State legislators in the Mexican state of Chihuahua asked federal authorities to ban a video game called “Call of Juarez: The Cartel,” which is based on drug cartel shootouts in Ciudad Juárez.
Community leaders in Ciudad Juárez, which averaged eight murders a day last year, argued the game glorifies and trivializes the violence for youngsters already drawn to crime.
“Lots of kids say they want to be a hitman, because they are the ones that get away with everything,” said youth worker Laurencio Barraza of Popular Organization, which works with youngsters in the city’s poor neighborhoods, according to Reuters. “This glorifies violence, as if victims were just another number or another bonus,” he added.
The web site of game developer Ubisoft Entertainment SA says the title is due for release this summer and the game’s promotional slogan urges players, “Take justice into your own hands and experience the lawlessness of the modern Wild West.”
“It is true there is a serious crime situation, which we are not trying to hide. But we also should not expose children to this kind of scenarios so that they are going to grow up with this kind of image and lack of values,” said Ricardo Boone Salmon, a congressman for Chihuahua state, according to U.S. News Source.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- 12 taxi drivers were killed in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco, just ahead of Monday’s start of the Mexican Open tennis tournament.
- Services for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed in Mexico is scheduled for Tuesday morning in Brownsville, Texas.
Caribbean
- Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother, Raúl Castro, were elected delegates to the 6th Congress of the governing Cuban Communist Party which will be held April 16-19 and which will be the first such gathering since 1997.
- Hundreds of Haitians marched through the capital Saturday to protest the ouster of the country’s youth football squad from the CONCACAF Under-17 Championship in Jamaica for health reasons.
Central America
- The vice-president of a Guatemalan football club has been shot dead, after receiving death threats over the team’s poor performance.
- President Barack Obama will visit El Salvador, Brazil and Chile from March 19 to March 23, the White House said on Friday.
Andes
- The government of Venezuela has said that it has contained a cholera outbreak that at its peak sickened hundreds of its citizens, who caught the disease at a wedding in the Dominican Republic.
- At least 10 people were killed and 10 others injured when a bus plunged into a ravine in a town in the Colombian province of Cundinamarca, police said Sunday.
- Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s chief doctor says he has been hospitalized for surgery to correct lesions on his tongue.
- Peruvian security forces launched a massive operation this weekend to destroy illegal gold mining equipment that is damaging fragile Amazonian habitats.
Southern Cone
- An international missions organization reported that half of Brazil’s population will be Evangelical Christians by 2020.
- The Vatican found Rev. Fernando Karadima guilty of sexually abusing minors in Chile and ordered him to retire to a “life of prayer and penitence.”
- Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo arrived Saturday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti to meet with troops from his country on humanitarian duty.
Image: Benyupp @ Flickr.
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